Ah... Havana. City of jarring paradoxes and unfathomable contradictions where seductive beauty sidles up to spectacular decay and revolutionary iconography is juxtaposed with sun, sea, sand, sex and a diluting slice of austere socialism. So says the guidebook. We’re in Cuba for a month to see and learn as much as we can of this colourful, fascinating country.
We start by exploring Habana Vieja’s streets and it’s four main colonial squares. Plaza de la Catedral, is a museum to Cuban baroque with all the surrounding buildings, including the city’s magnificent cathedral, dominated by two unequal towers and framed by a theatrical baroque facade. The Jesuits began construction of the Catedral de San Cristobal in 1748 and work continued despite their expulsion in 1767.
Inside the cathedral is simple with vaulted ceilings, massive stone pillars and a modest collection of art and antiquities.
This 17th century sculpture of Saint Christopher is interesting for it’s shortened legs which were cut in order to get the piece into place.
Cobbled, car-free Calle Mercaderes (literally Merchant’s Street) has been extensively restored by the City Historian’s office and is an almost complete replica of its splendid 18th century high-water mark and a good place to play your trumpet.
Born out of economic necessity Cubans are survivors with an intuitive ability to bend the rules and make something out of nothing. What to do with heaps of unwanted, old cannons and cannon balls? Make barricades to keep cars off pedestrian streets.
We go local by taking a scooter taxi.
The taxi driver knows a good tourist when he sees one and haggles Tim out of too many pesos.
Filling the whole west side of the Plaza de Armas the Museo de la Ciudad is built on the site of Havana’s original church. The museum wraps its way regally around a splendid central courtyard adorned with a white marble statue of Christopher Columbus.
Narrow car-free Calle Obispo, Habana Vieja’s main interconnecting artery, is packed with art galleries, shops, music bars and the swaying throng of people seem to move in time to the all-pervading live music.
The Museo de la Farmacia, founded in 1886, still acts as a working pharmacy for Cubans.
Just a normal lunch hour for Cubans and tourists alike at the Hotel Ambos Mundos, Hemingway’s Havana hideout and the place where he is said to have penned his seminal guerrilla classic, For Whom the Bell Tolls (Castro’s bedtime reading during the war in the mountains). The pastel-pink Ambos Mundos is a Havana institution and an obligatory pit stop for anyone on a world tour of ‘Hemingway-once-fell-over-in-here’ bars.
With an estimated 60,000 vintage cars still in Cuba, these old classics are a tribute to the nostalgia of the old days. Believe it or not, no new parts have been shipped to Cuba to service them since the early 60s, and they currently run on the sole ingenuity of the Cuban people. They either manufacture their own replacement parts, use common household items, or repurpose parts from older Soviet vehicles to keep them running.
The ornate, 2000-seat neobaroque Gran Teatro was erected as a social club between 1907 and 1914.
The incomparable Capitolo Nacional is Havana’s most ambitious and grandiose building, constructed after the ‘Dance of the Millions’ had gifted the Cuban government a seemingly bottomless treasure box of sugar money. Similar to the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC, but (marginally) taller and much richer in detail, the work was initiated by Cuba’s US-backed dictator Gerardo Machado in 1926 and took 5000 workers three years, two months and 20 days to build at a cost of US$17 million.
Sandi in front of the marble statue of José Marti in Parque Central, a scenic haven from the belching buses and roaring taxis that ply their way along the Prado. In behind is the Inglaterra Hotel, Havana’s oldest hotel which opened it’s doors in 1856. The building exhibits the neoclassical design features in vogue at the time, although the interior is distinctly Moorish.
The rehabilitation of Havana would be a huge achievement in any country, let alone one wracked by a devastating economic crisis. The piecing together of the Old Town began in the late 1970s and is ongoing. The plan has restored Havana’s most important historic buildings like this stunner on the Malecón.
A view of Vedado from the Malecón.
Fishermen and a view of the Fort.
Musica everywhere.
Chocolate addicts beware, the Museo del Chocolate, a quirky place in the heart of Habana Vieja, is a lethal dose of chocolate, truffles and yet more chocolate (all made on the premises). The sweet-toothed establishment is more of a cafe than a museum. Everything on the menu contains one all-pervading ingredient: have it hot, cold, white, dark, rich or smooth—the stuff is divine—whichever you choose.
Time for a lunch break by the pool of our hotel.
Finished in 1929, the magnificent Edificio Bacardi is a triumph of art deco architecture with a whole host of lavish finishings that somehow manage to make kitschy look cool. Hemmed in by other buildings, it's hard to get a full kaleidoscopic view of the structure from street level, though the opulent bell tower can be glimpsed from all over Havana. These views are from our hotel room window.
Dinner on the roof at La Moneda Restaurant in the Plaza de la Catedral.
A city institution since it opened in 1939, the world-famous Tropicana was one of the few bastions of Havana's Las Vegas-style nightlife to survive the clampdowns of the puritanical Castro Revolution. This open-air cabaret show is little changed since its ’50s heydey, featuring a bevy of scantily clad señoritas who climb nightly down from the palm trees to dance Latin salsa amid colourful flashing lights on stage. All that said, we think it is over-rated.
Breakfast in our hotel dining room.
Cuba has a huge art culture and its dual-site Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes rivals its counterpart in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for the title of ‘best art museum in the Caribbean’. You can spend a whole day here viewing everything from Greek ceramics to Cuban pop art.
The Museo de la Revolución is housed in the former Presidential Palace, constructed between 1913 and 1920 and used by a string of cash-embezzling Cuban presidents, culminating in Fulgencio Batista.
There are wonderful works of art and some stunning architectural details, including a replica of Versaille’s Hall of Mirrors, ornate bas-relief work and interior decorations by Tiffany.
Hey, it’s Che!
Tim in the President’s office.
Across from the Hotel Sevilla where we are staying is the Cuban National Ballet School. With approximately 3,000 students it is the biggest and most prestigious ballet school in Cuba and produces some of the world’s best ballet dancers.
We’re staying at Hotel Sevilla where Al Capone once hired out the whole 6th floor, Graham Greene used it as a setting for his novel, Our Man in Havana (room 501 to be exact) and the Mafia requisitioned it as operations centre for their pre-revolutionary North American drugs racket. Now the Moorish Sevilla still drips with history as countless old black and white photos of past guests (including Greene, Capone and Josephine Baker) will testify.
The amazingly intricate tile mosaic emblazoned on the wall of the downstairs café of the Hotel Telegrafo.
The internet in Cuba is among the most tightly controlled in the world. Even in the lobby of the Parque Central, one of the most expensive hotels in Havana, Tim can’t access his email. It’s refreshing to see people communicating face-to-face instead of poking on computer gadgets.
An ornate Moorish-style building graces the Prado.
Construction of this stately European-style boulevard known as Paseo de Marti or the Prado—the first street outside the old city walls—began in 1770, and the work was completed in the mid-1830s. The original idea was to create a boulevard as splendid as any found in Paris or Barcelona.
The famous bronze lions that guard the central promenade at either end were added in 1928.
Towel origami, compliments of the maids.
The Malecón, Havana’s evocative 8km-long sea drive, is one of the city’s most soulful and quintessentially Cuban thoroughfares.
Long a favoured meeting place for assorted lovers, philosophers, poets, traveling minstrels, fishermen and wistful Florida-gazers, the Malecón's atmosphere is most potent at sunset when the weak yellow light from creamy Vedado filters like a dim torch on the buildings of Centro Habana, lending their dilapidated facades a distinctly ethereal quality.
The cherry on the cake of Cuban hotels, the neoclassical/neocolonial/art deco (let’s call it eclectic) Hotel Nacional is as much a city monument as it is an international accommodation option. Even if you haven’t got the money to stay here, chances are you’ll find yourself sipping at least one minty mojito in its ocean-side bar.
Made famous thanks to the rum-swilling exploits of Ernest Hemingway (who by association instantly sends the prices soaring), La Bodeguita del Medio is Havana’s most celebrated bar. A visit here has become de rigueur for tourists who haven’t yet cottoned on to the fact that the mojitos are better and (far) cheaper elsewhere.
Sí, two hungry tourists can eat all this. Although this meal looks good, typical Cuban food is not palatable. Do not come to Cuba for it’s cuisine. A typical meal consists of a plate of plain white rice, deep-fried plantains or bananas and stringy, tough over-cooked grilled pork, beef or chicken. Consider yourself warned.
Past visitors have included Salvador Allende, Fidel Castro, Nicolas Guillen, Harry Belefonte and Nat King Cole, all of whom have left their autographs on the wall—along with thousands of others (save for the big names, the walls are repainted every few months). In keeping with tradition we added our names to the wall (look closely in center of photo).
We’ve rented a car and are heading out of Havana to the city of Cienfuegos, Cuba’s self-proclaimed ‘Pearl of the South’. Hasta luego.
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